I know, I know.

Rush Limbaugh also uses that "sense of humor" bullshit every time he gets called out for saying something blatantly racist.

In all seriousness: You might think you are funny, but you are not funny. You are a boor.

OK fine. You weren't speeding. You were just not paying attention.

Why that makes you feel better, I don't know.

Using harsh as a verb makes you sound like a moron.

Harsh is an adjective. For example, "Go fuck yourself, CB C@L," is kind of a harsh thing to say, but nonetheless it needs to be said.

The truth about driving is that it is dominated by the Lake Woebegone Effect. Most drivers think they are above average, and in fact they are not. Most people's driving sucks and it never gets any better with practice because they rarely get negative feedback. You can drive horribly for thousands of miles before getting a ticket or having an accident.

And then every once in a blue moon when a driver does get a bit of negative feedback suggesting their driving skill is not what they thought it was, they easily rationalize it away with endless reasons why it isn't really their driving that is at fault.

There's tons of data on this but people are in denial about that too.

So of course it sounds harsh when anybody tells the truth about driving. But 40,000 traffic "accident" deaths a year means something -- mostly that these deaths are not "accidental" at all.

In conclusion, go fuck yourself CB C@L and stop using harsh as a verb.

Trash and congestion and so on is neither here nor there. You could make the same complaint about the Solstice Parade or Seafair or anything else.

Either the city collects a fee for cleaning up trash, and every kind of parade or demonstration pays it equally. Or the city bears the cost of cleaning up after parades and whatnot as a cost of having a civil society. We pay to clean up after celebrations when some corrupt big time professional sports franchise wins a game, don't we?

Or if you're going to say the gays can't have a parade because of the trash and blocking the streets, then you have to say that nobody else can have a parade either. An idea which the courts are going to just swoon over, I bet...

So I was over there yesterday and went through Rainier and Orcas 4 times, though I never had it turn yellow as I was approaching. I stopped and watched it turn yellow from both the north and south, and timed it at 3-4 seconds.

I'll keep stopping by Rainer & Orcas to see if this yellow is extra short, but so far it seems normal.

Note that on 15th in Ballard, where the speed limit is also 30 mph, all of the yellows are 3-4 seconds too, and I know for certain on that street you can't get caught running a red unless you're speeding.

I've yet to find an intersection here with speeds so high or yellows so short that you can't make it through in time, unless you're speeding.

But I am more than willing to to drive through Orcas & Rainier a couple dozen times and if I get caught on the red, or have to slam my brakes, I will be happy to nag SDOT until they fix it.

Which, by the way, is surprisingly responsive agency. If you complain about a street issue, they will respond in person and try to figure it out.
http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/citizen_response.htm

Which intersection?

The places you saw these computer rental places in -- were they by chance outside the US? And how long ago did you last see one?

This is just a matter of prevailing wages for computer admins vs cost of computer hardware. Hardware is now cheap, and the people who keep public computers running are not cheap. Business model fail.

You should buy a laptop and store it in a locker somewhere so it won't be in your house.

Paying higher insurance for higher risk doesn't benefit the public, it benefits the insurance companies. Everyone should pay an equal insurance rate, proportionate only to how much they drive. Or how much gas the guzzle, which is fair, considering the social and safety impact of muscle cars and monster trucks.

You know, it's funny. With health insurance a lot of people get that when you divide people up in to "healthy" and "high risk" categories, you destroy the function of health insurance. The high risk people pay outrageously and the low risk pay little -- or don't bother to even insure themselves.

Yet somehow car insurance is different? Isn't the point of insurance to *share* risk? Single payer insurance at the gas pump has the same logic as single payer health insurance.

Of course some drivers are dangerous. Anybody who is an accident waiting to happen should have their license taken away, not merely be charged a higher rate.

The point is to think of s system that serves human needs and not to enrich insurance companies and oil companies.

The reason that's impractical is that the cost of administering a box for year is much higher than the cost of the machine. Maybe you'd be willing to pay more for a service like that than you'd pay to buy your own computer, but you can't expect there to be enough other people to be willing to throw money away to keep a computer rental shop or for-profit computer lab in business.